“Is this some sick joke? Is she having a lark?”


    Ludwig had been drinking. What exactly, Vergil couldn’t say but it stank. His home reeked with the sour tang of bad alcohol and stale food. If the place had been a sty when they last visited, now it was a disaster area of scattered books, scrolls and alchemy implements, made all the worse by the stray light of haphazardly lain candles and the one flickering sprite. He’d been down in the trash compactor of the Gloria and the resemblance was uncanny.


    The old man read the letter again, leaning against a wall for support, mumbling the words to himself. Vergil warmed his hands by a candle’s flame.


    How is he not frozen stiff? It’s as cold in here as out there.


    “Does she mean to taunt me? Is that why she sent you and not come herself?” He slurred the words and swayed while waving the piece of paper around. “Has she no shame left for an old teacher?”


    “I don’t know,” Vergil replied earnestly. “She seemed genuine.”


    “What’s happened? What changed her mind?”


    “I don’t know.”


    Ludwig stared at him and swayed on the spot, looking sick in the vain light. If his story had been true then he was well over three centuries old and Vergil thought he looked the part at that early hour. Or was it late? Time felt oddly syrupy in the storm outside.


    Shutters rattled as the blizzard breathed on Valen again.


    “Well, tell that sow that I’m not interested in catering to her capricious whims.” He fluttered the paper, seemed ready to rip it in two, then started reading it again, mumbling all the while. Now he paced among the stacks of ruined books, the single trembling sprite following him around.


    “Why would she do this to me? What’s her gain? I have done nothing but aid her at every turn when all others had discarded her. I know what it is to fall from Her Majesty’s grace.” He lapsed into slurred whispers.


    Vergil didn’t have the slightest inkling of what Ludwig was on about, nor what reply was expected of him. Tallah’s instructions were to come back with an answer from Ludwig, regardless of what it was. That looked to take a while as the old man twisted the paper in his gloved hands again, hesitating.


    He was rather certain that Tallah had not been serious when she instructed him to drag Ludwig to her by the legs if he couldn’t get a clear answer out of the old git.


    Ludwig seemed to rally his wits and stomped over to Vergil, shaking his finger at him.


    “She came to me. Do you know that? She sought me out in my home. When the Empress had cast her out, she looked to me for aid. And I aided her. I aided her gladly, for she was ever my student.” He was now too close and Vergil flinched back. Alcohol stink wafted off the old man like a vaporous mantle. “I always offered my advice and my aid to her. I kept her secret. And she treats me like trash.”


    “I don’t know what happened, Master Ludwig. She wrote the letter in a hurry and sent me out with it.”


    “She was cast out by the Empress for crimes so great that even she’s ashamed of them. There is a price on her head. Did you know that? There is a very high price on her head, but they think she’s dead, burned away to ashes.” A ghastly grin split his lips and spittle flew as he wound himself up. “I could turn her in and earn my way back into Aztroa. Has she ever considered this?”


    Vergil didn’t quite like where this line of thinking was going, not after his earlier run-in with the Guard. His hand grasped the pommel of the borrowed sword. Cutting the old man down wouldn’t take any effort at all. No one would even know.


    No one would care.


    He flinched at the thought and spun on his heels. Someone had whispered the idea to him, right in his ear. He had felt the draft of breath on his skin. Nothing behind but the shifting candlelight shadows, flickering in tune with the flame’s sputters.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    Ludwig read the crumpled paper again.


    “Can I…” He hiccuped the words and his shoulders drooped as if the weight of years settled over him. “Can I trust this, lad? Or will she just take what she needs of me again and go back on her promises?”


    It took effort to wrench his attention back to the old man. He was imagining things for lack of enough sleep. Pain bulged in his head, a throbbing, stabbing hurt that refused to let up. Tallah had warned him it would happen.


    “I haven’t known her that long, Master Ludwig, but she doesn’t strike me as someone who’d lie to her friends.” It surprised him that he believed that. In her own way, the sorceress had shown him… well, not kindness, no, but perhaps something close enough to count?


    He wandered away from the old man’s watery gaze, taking a candle with him. A forgotten cup of tea lay half-drunk on the side of a work table, lost amid the strewn-about instruments. Whatever he’d been working on lay smashed up in a clump of metal and glass, discarded. Empty bottles clattered to the floor as Vergil stumbled over a stack of books.


    More experiments lay scattered and unfinished. Yes, the old man had been working on something since they’d last seen him, quite feverishly by the looks of the detritus. A tinge of desperation hung silently draped over the room.


    “What were you trying to make?” he asked as he studied some parchment filled with annotations and designs. Glasses? Sil used similar equipment when she tweaked and polished Tallah’s spectacles.


    Ludwig sighed and sunk into the old armchair, earlier mania passed into dullness, his drunken mood swinging him into thoughtful contemplation.


    “I never laid all my hopes at Tallah’s feet. She’s far too wild for that, far too unpredictable.” He produced a cup from somewhere and drank deeply. Vergil hoped it was tea. “Her refusal, blunt as it was, hasn’t deterred me. I still aim to find my way into the ancient city with or without her help.”


    He tried to rise from the chair but nearly toppled forward. Instead, he settled back with the same expression he had worn when making his pleas, feigning dignity.


    “Tallah owns—or rather, she has stolen an artefact that grants her an Egia’s truest sight. It is called the Ikosmenia Mask and it is of immeasurable worth. She would not part with it for any price. I am attempting to replicate its abilities. I know the principle at work. It was taught to me by bastil Shadow Priests during my travels on Nen. I’ve been trying for a long, long time and I shan’t give up.”


    “None of that means anything to me,” Vergil said. “I don’t know most of those things, and it’s too early in the day to learn them.”


    Ludwig looked at him curiously. He scratched at the patchy stubble on his face.


    “Why did you lie about what was written on the book’s cover? What was your gain?”


    It took a moment to recall what the old man was talking about.


    “That. I didn’t lie and I had nothing to gain.”


    “Then how did you know how to read the words?”


    “I can’t say. Tallah swore me to secrecy.” That was a lie. Tallah had taken it at face value that his chip could simply translate text as well as it helped him understand and speak Imperial, and said nothing about keeping it a secret.


    Ludwig chuckled. “She would. Lad, there’s paper in the drawer there. Fetch it for me. And the charcoal on the table. Yes, that one.”


    He wrote on his knee, the letters uneven and sloping down the page. His hand steadied as he went, as if shedding off reluctance and gaining purpose. Heat wafted off him, as it sometimes did off Tallah when she was working.


    “I am a desperate fool. She’s right on that account. I’ll believe again that she needs my aid and will aid me in return.” He signed the letter with a flurry and handed it over. “Help me up. My head’s swimming in murky waters.”


    Vergil did, and then helped Ludwig up the stairs to the second level of his home. It was similarly devastated and reeked of old, unwashed clothes and unchanged linen. Under that stench there was again the tang of alcohol and the sweet aroma of tea.


    “Take this to her.” The old man handed him a closed box, about the size of his palm, held shut by a rusted lock. He had taken it out of an old, battered-looking chest that creaked when opened. “I’ve lost the key to it years ago but I’m certain she’ll manage to open it.”


    Vergil stowed everything in his cloak’s inner pockets, secured against the still howling wind. When he turned to leave, Ludwig clasped him by the arm. His old hand was much stronger than it had any right to be.


    “I trust her words because you do, boy. Had she come herself I would have thrown her out. Make of that what you will.” He seemed to pull back into himself for a moment and his grip slackened. “You listened.” Before fully releasing Vergil to the blizzard, he reached into his shirt and pulled out a small, time-worn pendant her wore tied to a silver chain on his neck, some kind of gemstone encased in a mesh of silver thread.


    Even in the poor light Vergil could see it pulsing gently, like a steady heartbeat. It seemed to drag to the side, as if pointing a certain way, counter to the wind rushing in.


    “The girl is alive, lad. If you’ve a heart in your breast, impress on Tallah that I may not survive another disappointment. Not after this.”